Britain Adds to the West’s Disarray

On June 6, 1944, after a build-up of over 2 million soldiers in the UK in preparation for a German invasion, 150,000 troops from the United States, Canada, and Britain landed on the northern French coast of Normandy. Backed by Australian, Belgian, Czechoslovak, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Polish, and Rhodesian naval, air, and ground support, this operation was the beginning of the liberation of Europe from Nazism.

It was also the beginning of a special transatlantic relationship anchored not only in NATO, which was founded five years later, but also in three other multilateral institutions: the European Union, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. These organizations, especially NATO and the EU, galvanized the West at a time when an Iron Curtain had divided Europe into two ideological camps.

Over seven decades later, the idealism and the perception of the West, protected by the United States, is being undermined. With a highly unpredictable president ensconced in the White House and Britain on an irreversible course to leave the EU, the West is losing its bearings. What is happening in the United States under President Donald Trump and in Britain under Prime Minister Theresa May, whose Conservative Party is struggling to maintain its lead ahead of the June 8 general election, has profound implications for the West.

Trump, for his part, is challenging the post-1945 consensus on free trade and even questioning America’s security commitment to its European allies. May, meanwhile, believes Britain can turn its back on Europe (although she repeatedly says it isn’t doing that) while forging separate trade deals with other countries. Were it as easy as that.

May, who by calling an early general election hoped to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations with the EU, has ceded immense ground to her opponent and leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. She moved to the Right of her party to attract voters and zigzagged over her economic and social policies. After an interview with the Financial Times on June 3, she seems completely in self-denial over security, Britain future strategic place in Europe, and how the UK will cope once it leaves the EU.

Corbyn, who is a zealous leftist, has kept his campaign focused on poverty, inequality, and the reintroduction of state ownership. Forget about Britain being open to the world. It is a dismal choice for British voters. The only middle ground is represented by the small Liberal Democrats. Even then, the party has lacked a convincing leadership on social and foreign policies.

This is why the British election is bad news for the West. The West was built on an openness to trade, the protection of democratic institutions and their values, and market economies. These issues do not figure at all in the British election campaign.

Whatever the outcome of Britain’s election, the country’s future path will deal a double blow to the West. The UK’s traditional liberalism, its diplomatic experience, and its Anglo-Saxon economic culture will be sorely missed by several European countries. Yet what is astonishing to see is the impact the Brexit vote is already having on Britain’s own political culture, which is infected by populism, while in parts of Britain whose economies have been decimated, sections of the population have been left behind.

Britain’s diplomatic service is led by a foreign secretary who lacks all sense of gravity about the road his country is headed down. The political discourse is dominated by a blame game, shallowness, and introverted debates. Furthermore, there has been a gradual erosion of the special relationship between London and Washington, two partners that were once important stabilizing forces for the West.

But at a time when May needs the United States more than ever before, Trump’s extraordinarily insensitive tweets about the terrorist attack in London on June 3, in which he criticized and misquoted the reaction by the city’s Mayor Sadiq Khan to the attacks, has exacerbated relations between London and Washington. Britain’s allies are fast diminishing.

That is no cause for schadenfreude. On the contrary. An EU without Britain (and vice versa) and the unpredictable leadership in Washington leave the West weaker. After all, the EU would not have been established and would not have thrived without the active support of the United States. The West is losing the ballast that kept it strong.

This is dangerous for Europe, for Britain, and for the United States. This can only benefit authoritarian leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Communist leadership in China, who have viewed the West as a political and economic alliance that set standards for market economies, trade rules, and climate change.

Yet the West’s decline should not be inevitable. The West has been the beacon and inspiration for individuals and movements seeking the freedom to speak, to have independent judges and accountable officials, and, above all, to hold free elections.

These are aspirations that Europeans and Americans can continue to support despite the malaise from which the West now suffers. Moaning about the West’s demise could become a self-fulfilling prophecy unless leaders on both sides of the Atlantic recognize what the alternative holds. Brexit is surely a warning.

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noel

June 07, 201712:13 pm

"this operation was the beginning of the liberation of Europe from Nazism"
What about the Russians..? UK & US politics is in a dangerous state but Western exceptionalism will not help to understand why. The roots of this problem are in rising inequality. Far from being the dismal choice of a "zealous lefty", a failure to address inequality will doom us individually and globally to fragmentation and decay.

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Alexis de Pleshcoy

June 13, 20176:47 pm

If a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok has a chance to survival in a world dominated by Asian hyper super powers, it has first to agree on a common interpretation of history.
The Normandy landing was a major step in freeing a part of Europe from Nazi German occupation. The invasion force described in the article was attacked by two Luftwaffe fighter planes, and faced a handful of armored divisions. The bulk of the Wehrmacht was on the Eastern front, where thousands of planes and tanks perished already in titanic clashes, as were millions of the best German troops; within days of the landings the Russian lunched there a huge offensive.
Moreover, days after the landing, a new financial world order was born at Bretton Woods, with IMF and World Bank amongst its foundation stones; it was for the world, not just for Europe. As a side note the US dollar became The reserve currency, but not forever (which the current administration doesn’t seem to grasp).
In the end Churchill will conclude with Stalin the napkin treaty (behind Roosevelt’s back) which amounted to another betrayal of both Czechoslovakia and Poland.
The US gave Europe (and the world), a League of Nations which they couldn’t keep; then they gave Europe the EU, so they finally stop killing each other, and NATO to protect them; tens of trillions will be eventually wasted on MAD, with more to come, and now a new generation of CFR “thinkers” who seem to believe a nuclear war can be fought and won.
It is time for Europe to understand the time has come to rely more on themselves; President Trump has stated he will abide by the Article 5 (Iohannis press conference), like Obama’s ERI was not enough. Moreover, does anybody really believe that the tens of thousands of US soldiers in Europe will not retaliate if attacked, with or without Article 5?
Europe has to understand, most and foremost that they have to build a society based on Smith and Keynes economics, rooted in the 1848 revolutions, not on whatever the astute showman Milton Friedman was peddling.
For the UK the only real long term solution is to go to Canossa and ask back in, and hopefully Macron and Merkel understand their own interests and say yes. When the older people heard that they get free market based solutions for Alzheimer care (i.e. lose the house) they all of a sudden stayed home; the youth went to vote for Corbyn, but they missed the critical Brexit one.
In 2050 SCO will have more than 3 billion people, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi if not united!

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